It’s not hard to argue that Sofia Coppola hit her peak a while ago. Her first two films—the severely overlooked The Virgin Suicides and the award-winning Lost in Translation—are easily her best. Marie Antoinette isn’t any good, Somewhere goes nowhere, and now there’s The Bling Ring, which, while artistically competent and intermittently interesting, doesn’t seem to know which side of the mirror it’s on. Is it a social critique of our fame-obsessed culture or is the film itself fame-obsessed? Coppola has chosen for her fifth film the story of teenage burglars who targeted celebs like Paris Hilton, in part because they worshipped them and in part because these stars had so much that they might not miss what was taken. Nice work by Emma Watson here, but it’s hard to say the film’s a success.
ByColin Boyd